Hungary Threw Out the EU Flag in 2014. Anti-EU Accounts Are Sharing It as Breaking News.
A viral video of the EU flag being removed from the Hungarian parliament has been shared by multiple high-follower accounts claiming Hungary was 'colonized' by the EU. The footage is from 2014. Hungary joined voluntarily after 83.76% voted Yes in a referendum, and has received nearly 5,000 euros per capita in EU cohesion funds since.
A viral video showing the EU flag being removed from the Hungarian parliament has been shared by multiple high-follower accounts on X with claims that Hungary was "colonized" by the European Union and "forced" into membership. The video is from 2014. Hungary joined the EU voluntarily in 2004, after 83.76% of voters backed membership in a national referendum.
The posts, shared within 24 hours of each other by accounts including @HungaryBased, @BasilTheGreat, and @BROKENBRITAIN0, have accumulated over 37,000 engagements combined. Community Notes and X's own AI chatbot Grok have both flagged the video as over a decade old.
What Actually Happened in 2014
The footage shows Jobbik MP Tamas Gaudi-Nagy throwing the EU flag out of a window of the Hungarian parliament building in February 2014. Jobbik was a far-right opposition party at the time, not a member of the governing coalition.
Later that year, in November 2014, Speaker Laszlo Kover formally ordered the EU flag removed from the parliament chamber, according to the Budapest Business Journal. The Budapest Beacon confirmed the order at the time.
Neither event is recent. Neither represents a current policy shift. The viral posts present 12-year-old footage as breaking news.
The "Colonization" Claim vs. the Referendum Record
The posts describe Hungary's EU membership as forced, using the word "colonized." The historical record says otherwise.
On April 12, 2003, Hungary held a national referendum on EU membership. 83.76% of voters chose to join. All four parliamentary parties supported membership. The Robert Schuman Foundation described the result as approval "by a wide majority." Hungary officially joined the EU on May 1, 2004.
Colonization, by definition, is imposed. Hungary's EU membership was chosen by its own citizens in a democratic vote. Calling it colonization is not a political opinion. It is factually wrong.
Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union provides any member state with an unconditional right to withdraw. Hungary can leave the EU at any time. It has not done so.
The Money Hungary Takes While Complaining
Hungary is one of the EU's largest net beneficiaries. According to European Commission data, Hungary has received nearly 5,000 euros per capita in EU cohesion funds since joining in 2004. The latest programming period allocates 21.7 billion euros to Hungary between 2021 and 2027.
EU funds finance 94% of Hungary's railway investments and 54% of its road construction. The money builds the hospitals, schools, and infrastructure that Hungarian citizens use daily.
Multiple users in the reply threads pointed out this contradiction. One wrote: "Leave the EU, stop taking money from it." Another asked: "Why doesn't Hungary just leave the EU?.. This is just symbolic politics that means nothing."
They are right. The Orban government has no interest in actually leaving the EU. As Professor Zsolt Enyedi has noted, "I don't think Orban will ever voluntarily leave the EU primarily because of financial reasons."
The current Hungarian government's strategy is to take EU money while attacking EU institutions. That is not sovereignty. That is subsidy-funded political theatre.
Coordinated Amplification
The near-identical text and timing of the three major posts raises questions about coordination. @HungaryBased posted first on January 31. Within 24 hours, @BasilTheGreat and @BROKENBRITAIN0 published posts with almost the same wording and the same video.
@TheBritishIntel shared a version claiming Hungary was "openly rejecting EU symbolism." @newsforeu countered with context, pointing out that Hungary "throws the EU flag out of parliament while cashing the largest per-capita EU subsidies on the continent."
The Community Note on the @BasilTheGreat post states that the video is from 2014 and shows Speaker Kover ordering the flag's removal. Grok, when invoked by multiple users across all three threads, confirmed the footage is from February 2014 and shows Jobbik MPs, not a government action.
The fact-checking worked in this case. But the original posts still reached tens of thousands of people before corrections appeared.
The Pattern Behind the Posts
This is not an isolated incident. Hungary's government and its sympathizers have spent years cultivating a narrative of EU oppression while quietly accepting EU funds. The Warsaw Institute has documented how Russian disinformation operations specifically target Hungary, exploiting legitimate debates about sovereignty to push anti-EU messaging.
The technique is familiar. Take a real grievance, in this case questions about EU institutional power, and wrap it in misleading content. A 12-year-old video becomes "breaking news." A voluntary membership becomes "colonization." A democratic decision becomes "forced conditions."
It follows the same playbook documented in recent viral corruption claims targeting EU aid to Ukraine, where genuine accountability concerns are weaponized to undermine European solidarity. And it connects to the broader network of far-right anti-EU actors with documented Russian ties.
What Deeper Integration Would Fix
The current EU has limited tools for responding to a member state that takes its money while systematically undermining its institutions. Brussels has frozen 22.5 billion euros in Hungary's EU funds over rule-of-law violations, and partially released 10 billion euros when Hungary made token concessions. The cycle repeats.
This is a failure of incomplete integration. A European Federation with proper democratic accountability would not need to negotiate with a government that pockets EU funds while telling its citizens the EU is a colonial power. Federal structures would enforce common standards on anti-corruption and media freedom as a condition of membership, not as an afterthought.
The EU has already demonstrated that its regulatory power shapes global standards. In a multipolar world where European energy security depends on collective action, the case for deeper integration is strategic, not just ideological.
Hungary's citizens voted to join Europe. Their government's job is to make that membership work for them, not to recycle 12-year-old footage and call it oppression.
February 2, 2026